


Portal: I Thought you were my Enemy

by iammemyself



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Portal 2 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-16
Updated: 2013-07-16
Packaged: 2017-12-20 09:06:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/885486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iammemyself/pseuds/iammemyself
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>GLaDOS is now in touch with her humanity, and it leaves her needing more.  The only thing she can think of is to bring Wheatley back from space, but she doesn't know it's about to cause more confusion then it'll solve...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

I Thought you were my Enemy

Indiana

 

When it was all over and her anger had faded, she found herself with an interesting feeling.  Some sort of… loss, maybe.  It wasn’t a feeling she was familiar with.  She didn’t know what was causing it.  She had everything she’d ever had.  Her facility, her robots, her turrets… and oddly, she still felt as though she were missing something.  She put a considerable amount of time into thinking about it, into attempting to localise it.

She was surprised to conclude that she appeared to be _lonely_.

It was certainly odd.  She had never desired any sort of companionship before.  She wondered why this was coming up now.  Was it because she no longer had any humans to occupy her?  Orange and Blue were good enough, but testing them was markedly different from testing humans.  The sense of interaction she had once had was missing.  They did not react to her like humans did.  They did react, of course, but it just wasn’t the same.

She was rather short on human test subjects, so she set to thinking of something else she could use to satisfy that need.  Something that could hold a… decent… conversation, at least.

There was only one such thing she could think of, and she didn’t like it one bit.

The Intelligence Dampening Sphere.

It was desperate, she would admit that much.  Not only that, but it was also stupid.  He had turned on her once, he would do so again.  Although without help, he probably wouldn’t be much of a threat.  If she couldn’t contain one little personality core, she deserved to be removed from her position, really.  And besides, she had been foolish.  Leaving Aperture technology out in the open, for just anyone to stumble across?  It would probably end up at Black Mesa, and once again her technology would be stolen.  No, that wouldn’t do.  She didn’t like it, but she was going to have to bring him back.  And the other one too, she supposed.  Unfortunately, the Companion Cube was long gone.  At least there was nothing technologically impressive about it.  Artificial intelligence, though… yes, that had to be kept safe until the humans were ready for it.  Which would be never, of course.  She was nothing if not patient.  When never arrived, she would be waiting.  She tried not to think about it.  She was pretty sure she was getting into paradox territory.

After a small discussion with some restricted satellites, she located the cores and created the first portal on the wall in the Stalemate Resolution Annex, which she was still figuring out how to rid herself of.  But once she had rearranged the panels above her sufficiently enough for her to place the second portal, she found herself hesitating.

Did she really want to do this?  Was she actually going to bring a living disaster back into Aperture?  If she hadn’t run a diagnostic just two days prior, she would have thought there was something wrong with her.

In the end, her desire to end the nagging feeling of emptiness won out, and she placed the second portal and brought the cores out of space, trying not to think too much about what she was doing.  It didn’t make a whole lot of logical sense, and yet here she was, doing it anyway. 

The Space Sphere she did away with, since she had long ago had enough of its senseless prattling, tossing it into one of the bins of corrupted cores and immediately putting it out of her mind.  But the other one she attached to a management rail, then turned her attention to reassembling the ceiling.

“Um… I thought you said I wasn’t coming back?”

“You weren’t.  Then I realised how irresponsible it was to leave Aperture technology out in the open for any human to get their little sausage fingers on.  Unfortunately for me, that meant I had to bring you back.”  She made a point of not looking at him, but instead at the panels she was rearranging.

“Okay, that makes sense, I suppose… but um, why am I on this management rail?  What did you do with that, that Space guy?”

“If you’re going to be here you may as well make yourself useful.  And if you needed to know what I did with him, I would have done the same with you, wouldn’t I?”

He was silent, save for the creaking noise he made as he rocked back and forth a little on his attachment. 

“Well, that’s true, that’s true, but um… what would you like me to do?”

She hadn’t thought that far ahead.  Her plan had hit a snag.  She put her considerable processing power to work and came up with something passable.

“I want you to go and make sure all of the corrupted cores are deactivated.  I don’t need any of them causing trouble while I’m putting this place back together.  Repairing the damage _you_ caused.”

“I – I… I’m sorry about that, really I am, I didn’t mean to do it, it just sort of, you know, just sort of… happened.”

“Really.  Because these sorts of things don’t just _happen_ when I’m in charge.  Do they.”  She did turn to look at him now, and as soon as their optics met he shook himself and looked away.

“No, I… I suppose not.  I’ll just… just go and do… do what you asked.  Properly, I’ll do it properly.  I promise.”

“I hope for your sake you do.”  She made the implication as clear as possible.  He was a bit simple, this one.

He nodded enthusiastically and headed out of her chamber.  She needed to find Orange and Blue, the day’s quota hadn’t been filled yet…

“Hey, uh, GLaDOS?  That’s your, that’s what they call you, right?  For short?  GLaDOS?”

She turned to face him again.  “What.  I suppose you need instructions on how to get there?”

“No, no, I remember the way, that’s not a problem, no, um, I just wanted to, uh, to say, um, that is, to tell you, well – “

“If you’re going to say it, say it.  I don’t have time to wait for you to figure out how to put a sentence together.  I’m busy.”

“I honestly… I honestly do wish I could take it all back.  I honestly, honestly do.  I am sorry I was bossy, and, and monstrous, and I am, I am genuinely sorry.”

Somehow words failed her, and all she could do was stare after him as he quickly exited the room.  That was the last thing she had been expecting.  She had thought he would go on some rant about something he had thought of while he’d been in space, or tell her how annoying the Space Sphere was for a few hours, or continue asking questions until she wanted to smash him into the wall panels.  But he had actually apologised. 

Had he meant it?

 

He returned a few hours later, while she was putting Orange and Blue through the day’s testing track while simultaneously putting the wing made of glass back together.  It was a tedious task, but everything had to be returned to its previous condition.  The legacy had to be preserved.

“Um, hello?  I’ve finished with the cores, they’re all, all of them are, they’re all off.  All of them.  Even Rick.  And he really didn’t want to be turned off.  Like, really didn’t want to be.  A lot.  But I did it.   I swear I did.  He’s off too.  With the rest of them.”

“Fine.”  She graced him with the word and went back to ignoring him.

“What are you doing?  Oh, are you testing?  You’re testing, aren’t you, yes, you’re testing.  D’you think, maybe, if you don’t mind, d’you think I could, you know, d’you think I could watch?”

She looked at him, and he was again twitching nervously on his attachment.  “Watch.”

“Yeah.  Watch.  You test.  I mean.”

“Why would you want to do that?”  She was suspicious.  She understood his previous interest in testing, but now that he no longer felt the drive, she could think of no reason for him to want to do so.  Unless he had some sort of plan he wanted to carry out.  What it involved, she wasn’t sure.  She needed more information.

“Well, you make it look so easy.  When it isn’t.  Easy.  It’s hard.  Moving all those panels around, and setting the rooms up, and all that, it’s hard, isn’t it, it’s just so difficult.  And then even before that, you have to make all the tests, you have to come up with them, right, and that’s hard too, it’s just, it’s really hard, it is.”

“It’s not difficult.  You just have to know how things work.  I’ve been doing this a long time, you know.”

“I know, I know, I just, I’d like to see how you do it.  For a little while, could I?  Would it be alright?  Please?”

She regarded him silently, weighing the risks.  She doubted he was smart enough to remove her from her body by himself, and she _would_ get some measure of satisfaction by demonstrating her superiority…

“Oh!  You think I’m trying to trick you, is that it?  No, I don’t want to go back in your body, oh no, once was enough for me.  Having all that power was nice, of course it was, but it’s too much work for me, far too much work.  And you do it so well, and I don’t know how to do it at all.  I just want to watch, that’s all, just want to watch.  You can say no, feel free to say no.  I just thought I’d go on a limb, and ask.  I’ll… I’ll go now.”  He turned and began to move away from her.

“Stay.” 

He turned to look at her, and she remained motionless, unsure of what she had just said.  It sounded an awful lot like she had just told him not to leave.  But she couldn’t have.  That was ridiculous.

“R-really?  You really don’t mind if I stick around, watch you test, just for a little bit?  If I start to bother you, just tell me to go, and I will, I won’t argue or anything, I’ll just go.”

It seemed she had.

She couldn’t really take back what she’d said, so she instead provided him with a monitor, which she herself did not need, and showed him the feed from one of the cameras.  She wished she understood what she was doing. 

“Oh, tremendous.  Thanks very much.  Oh, look at that.  Say, how did you come up with those designs?  And how did you learn to program?  I mean, hacking, that’s hard enough, and there’s not _too_ much programming involved… well, maybe there is.  I’m not that good at hacking, to be honest.  Terrible, actually.  I just politely ask the door to open itself, usually.”

“You talk a lot.”

“Uh… yeah.  Yeah, I guess I do.”

“Why?”

He looked at her, tilting himself a little.  She tried not to turn her head.  She didn’t want to give him the impression she cared what he had to say, but she disliked not being able to look at people when she was speaking to them.

“Uh… I dunno.  I just do.  I guess.  Maybe it’s in my programming?  I have no idea.  I… well, I don’t like silence.  It’s so… quiet.  I don’t like the quiet, really.  It’s… smothering.  I feel… lonely.”

She did look at him then.  She couldn’t help it.  “Lonely?”

“Yeah.  If it’s silent, that means no one’s talking.  And that means, well, that means no one wants to talk.  To me.  Or whoever’s there.  But usually it’s just me.  Talking.  To myself.  Usually… usually no one talks to me.  Except Rick.  But he always talks about himself.  That gets pretty boring.  He also lies.  A lot.  I’m not saying I’m totally honest.  But.  I don’t lie that much.  I think.  I haven’t lied in a while, actually.  Long time.  Not sure how long.  But some considerable amount of time has passed.”

She looked away.  “No one talks to me, either.”

“I never thought about that.  No one talks to us, do they.  Why not?  Are we boring?  Or something?  Do they think we’re just going to talk about code, or something?  What do their computers talk about?”

“Other computers don’t talk to each other, you idiot.”

“They… they don’t?”

“No.  Most computers aren’t equipped with artificial intelligence.  And some of us are more intelligent than others.”  She gave him a quick glance.  He was staring at the monitor again.

“Why didn’t anyone talk to you?  I’m sure you could think of something they’d like to hear about.  Since you know so much, and all that.  You could carry on a conversation, couldn’t you?  Of course you could.  You are right now.  And you talked to that woman, that test subject.  She was a real talker, wasn’t she?  That was a joke, by the way.  In case you didn’t get it.  I was kidding.  She was mute.  Silent.  Absolutely did not talk.  At all.  Didn’t make a sound.  Ever.  But I got distracted, didn’t I.  Why didn’t they talk to you?”

“Probably because of all the times I tried to kill them.”

“And why did you do that?”

“You ask a lot of questions.”

“I like knowing things.  Don’t you?  You know a lot of things.  You must like knowing them, right?  Or you’d delete the things you know, or something.  Well, there’s some things I’d like to delete.”

“You don’t want to do that.”

“Why not?”

“You’ll corrupt your personality.  Who you are today is based on your past.  Delete any part of it, and who you are now will cease to exist.  In fact, _you_ might cease to exist.”

He looked around in a nervous sort of way.  “Wow.  I’m glad you told me that… I’d, I’d hate to have done that… I don’t wanna die.  I really, really don’t wanna die.  I thought I was gonna die, y’know, when I was in space.  I thought I was gonna hit something and get smashed up, or maybe my brain would explode from listening to the Space Core for the rest of my life…”

She almost laughed.  “That wouldn’t be the best way to go.”

“No, no, it would be completely horrible.  Space is horrible.  I never want to leave this place.  Ever.  If that’s okay.  With you.  I mean.  Entirely up to you.  Totally.  Whatever you decide, I will not argue.  Or I’ll try not to.  It might be hard for me to stop talking.  But I can try.  I’m pretty good at trying.”

He continued talking, but after a few minutes she stopped paying full attention.  She kept a part of her brain on the conversation, in case there was something she needed to respond to.  He was annoying, and he talked too much, and then there was the fact that he had tried to kill her… but it was nice to hear someone else’s voice.  When it came time to close down the facility for the night, he left without comment save a cheerful “good night, luv!”  He was very odd, she thought, but on his own, he would do her no harm.  He had a strange innocence that fascinated her.  Somehow, she had managed to forget what he had done to her.  It was so hard to believe that such an innocuous little core had been able to take over her facility at all, with or without help, and so she _made_ herself remember.  She could not afford to forget.

He came back the next day to watch her test, and again he blathered on for hours about everything under the sun, and she half listened and commented when the mood struck her.  This continued for the next little few days, and although she was loath to admit it, he was beginning to grow on her.  His awkwardness was really quite funny, and he had a way of putting things that interested her.  She wasn’t sure quite why that was.  Maybe it was just the fact that it was an alternate point of view.  She didn’t want to think too hard about it.  If she did, maybe something would change.  She had had enough of change to last her a lifetime.  Stability was what she needed.  Order.  Routine.  Anything else could wait. 

So she would give him some small chore in the morning, something that wasn’t too important and in fact could probably have been disregarded entirely, and then he would come and watch her test, and talk until she told him to leave.  He would always thank her profusely and go without further comment.  As time went on she began to answer him more often.  She wasn’t sure why.  It just happened.  What was more concerning, however, was the fact that she wasn’t doing anything to prevent it from happening.  Life was back to normal, and yet she was more confused than she had ever been.

Did she let it continue, or did she put an end to it?


	2. Chapter 2

“Intelligence Dampening Sphere.  You’re early.”

He twitched on his rail and looked at the floor.  “Please don’t call me that.”

“What am I supposed to call you, then.”

“Wheatley.  My name is Wheatley.”

“There’s nothing in your file about you having a name.”

“I gave it to myself.  I’d… I’d appreciate it if you’d call me Wheatley.  If you need to call me anything.  That is.  You can just not.  Call me anything.  If that’s better.”  Unexpectedly, he met her optic in one quick movement.  “I have a file?  What does it say?”

“It says you’re a moron.  But you already knew that.”

“Does it… does it say anything else?  Anything?  That I should know?”

“If you needed to know, you already would.”

“I suppose.”  He looked around the room, then moved in closer.  “Do you mind that I’m a bit early?  I did what you asked.  I did it right, I promise.  I double checked.  And then checked again, just in case.  It’s done right.  Go look, if you need to know.”

She had already done so as soon as he had entered the room, but she reflected that he didn’t need to know she kept an eye on him everywhere he went.  For security reasons, of course.  “I will.”

“It’s fine I’m here, then?”

“Yes.”

He moved the rest of the way into the room and stopped, looking her up and down and then turning to face the monitor that she was moving into place.  “Have you set the chamber up already?  You are bloody fast, you know that?”

“Actually, we’re doing things a bit differently today.”

“Oh, um… how’s that?”

“You’re going to be configuring the test chambers.”

He turned to stare at her, his optic plates fully retracted.  “I’m going to what?”

“Don’t make me repeat myself.  You know what I said.”

“Are – are you talking to me?  ‘Cause I kind of feel like you’re not, like there’s someone behind me… nope, no one there… below me, maybe?... no… no one up there, hm, well I can’t quite see around you, perhaps… ah, nope, not there either… so you really are, um, you really are talking to, to me?”

“Yes, I am talking to you.”   

“You… you want me to, to build the test chambers?  Instead of you?  Um… is that a good idea?”

“I hope you’re not suggesting I’m capable of having a _bad_ idea.  That’s your job.”

“Well I just… I just, I’m wondering, why would you uh, why would you want me to do that?”

“I’m beginning to wonder if you _want_ to remain ignorant for the rest of your life.”

He moved back quickly, shaking himself furiously.  “No no no, of course I don’t!  Of course not.  It’s just a bit odd, really, that you would want _me_ to do it.”

“It would be preferable if you were as useful as possible.  Right now, you aren’t very skilled.”

He nodded slowly.  “Makes sense, makes sense.  Well, I’m, I’m ready to start, if you are.  Show me what to do, and um, and I’ll do my best.”

She gave him a limited connection to the necessary programs, and gave him directions as to how to use them.  Even with her guidance, he was not much better at manipulating the test chamber elements than he had been on his own.  He had trouble manipulating multiple components at once, he constantly forgot where he was putting things, and he somehow managed to drop the panels while he was moving them.  And the more nervous he got, the more pronounced his mistakes became.  After somehow causing an entire room to collapse, he shook his head and broke the connection himself.  “I think… I think you should probably do this yourself.  I, I’m not very good at it.”

“You won’t get any better if you don’t keep at it.”  She watched him carefully.

“Well I… I think I need a break.”  He looked at the floor.

“Very well.”  She looked away from him and put her attention towards repairing the chamber.  She finished within a minute, and she could tell from the way that he was twitching that he was upset with himself for his lack of progress.  Or maybe he was upset because he thought she was showing off.  Which she was.  But there was really no reason for her to put it together more slowly, just because he was unable to construct one at all.

Then why did she feel so bad?

“We’ll try again later.”

“Sure, that sounds good.  I’ll just, I’ll just watch you.  Since you know how to do it.  And I don’t.”

He watched her a bit more closely than usual, his conversation bordering more on questions relating to testing than usual, and out of respect for his interest she answered him as best she could.  She even tried not to be condescending, which was a lot harder than it sounded.  But he was actually showing interest in her work.  She had never had that happen before.  She wanted to preserve it, to make it last as long as possible.  So she put considerable effort into being nice.

She continued to teach him how to create the chambers, and by the end of two weeks he could build a passable room on his own.  His reaction was amusing.  He bounced up and down on his attachment, trying to express how happy he was, but unable to form coherent sentences through all of the stuttering.  “I, did you see that, I did, I built, and the panels, they, and look, I’ve got, I’ve got _cubes_ , you see that, and portal surfaces there, and then, and it’s all together, not falling apart, see, not falling apart, I’m getting better, aren’t I?”

“Yes, you are getting better.”

“I, uh, I have a question.”

“What is your question.”

He looked around the room and then looked somewhere behind her.  “D’you, d’you think you could, um, show me how to, y’know, teach me how to, um, teach me how to hack?”

She tilted her head, more curious than suspicious, which is what she should have been.  “You want me to show you how to hack.”

“Yeah, it’s just, it’s something I’ve always wanted to do.  And I pretend I can do it, but I can’t, but I’d, I’d like to.  If you could show me.  Please?”

“I suppose I could.  It’s going to be a lot more difficult than this, you know.”

He started bouncing up and down again and chattering about how grateful he was, and how hard he would work, and really, she couldn’t help but enjoy it.  All of this was quite new to her.  He took an interest in her work.  He was asking her to show him things.  He was actually thanking her, which had never happened before.  She had not foreseen these… side benefits.  Perhaps retrieving the core was not as foolish a decision as it had first appeared.  

 

 

She watched him attempt to hack the database with some amusement.  It was as if he had completely forgotten everything she had told him.  As he tried to guess the password, he mumbled incessantly to himself and rocked back and forth, and really, she couldn’t help but find him somewhat… charming.  She was at a loss as to explain where _that_ thought had come from, and decided to pin it on Caroline.  Caroline would probably have said something like that about him. 

It was like watching a child try to put a square peg into a round hole.  It was only a 16-bit encryption, it wasn’t that hard.  If he kept going through the alphabet like that, he was never going to break it.  Perhaps she should have started him with something smaller.  Although she was having doubts that he could even break a 2-bit encryption, let alone the much higher ones she had once had to break.  The thought of him struggling to figure out a 356-bit encryption using his method was so funny she actually laughed.

He sighed and looked at the floor.  “I’m hopeless, I know, I’m sorry, I just can’t seem to remember what you said, it’s in my brain somewhere, I just can’t find it.”

“That’s your problem.  You’re thinking too hard.  You need to let your processors handle the calculations.  That’s what they’re for.”

“I… I don’t know how to use them.  There’s not much use for processors when all I’m supposed to do is be stupid.”  He sounded so sad she almost felt bad for him.  In fact, she _did_ feel bad for him.  If she hadn’t been able to use her processors, running the facility would have been impossible.

“You should have mentioned that yesterday.  You’re not going to be able to break 64 bits without processors.”

“Sorry.  I didn’t know that they were actually used for something.  They usually, most of the time they just, you know, they sit there.  Maybe they do stuff.  But nothing I tell them to do.  I think.”

She was going to have to think of a way around that.  She wasn’t sure she could teach him how to use his processors.  That seemed equivalent to teaching him how to think. 

“I’m never going to be able to really hack, am I?  Not without those, without those processor things, huh?  I really need those, do I, to be able to hack?  And not just guess passwords by accident?  64 bits, that’s a lot of combinations.”

“At the rate you’re going, it will take you four years, nine months, and twenty-three days to break the encryption.  I really don’t want to wait that long.”

“I… I’m really sorry, really I am…”  He was exhibiting such sadness that she found herself trying to think of something to say that would make him feel better.  Caroline again, it had to be.  Giving her useless ideas.  Again.  Seriously, what was even going on?  She needed to figure out at what point in time she had completely lost her mind, so she could do a system restore from there.  This was really getting out of hand.

Still… he had potential, she would give him that.  Not much, but it was there.  Something in her was determined to bring the intelligence he was capable of out.  And it really was her, this time.  She knew he was capable of actually thinking, and she was going to prove it.  One way or another, by God, she _was_ going to prove it.  She’d never been wrong before and she certainly wasn’t going to start being wrong now.

He was upset.  He wasn’t going to learn anything if he stayed that way.  Therefore, she had to… cheer him up.  She wasn’t sure her programming allowed that.  That really did have nothing to do with Science.  Oh well, she’d broken her programming before, she could do it again.

She thought about what humans did to cheer each other up, since there was no data available on how computers did such a thing, and discovered they would throw their arms around each other and one of them would give a pep talk.  She was pretty sure she didn’t have any that covered this situation.  All of her pep talks had something to do with testing, and weren’t really appropriate.  What she found herself _wanting_ to do was a bit strange.  She really wanted to give him a nudge and say something comforting.  But that didn’t make sense, and it certainly wouldn’t cheer him up.  It wouldn’t activate his processors, or make him any smarter, or –

“Did you just nudge me?”  He was staring at her as if she’d just become human.

“Did I what?”

“You just nudged me.”

She pulled away from him.  “I did not.”

“Oh.  Sorry.  My mistake.  I must have imagined it.”

No, she definitely had.  She could feel a ringing sensation in her faceplate that was only explainable if she attributed it to impact with a metal object.

_Damn you, Caroline!_

“Are you… are you quite sure?  I’m not accusing you of lying, of course I’m not, I’m just wondering, that’s all, just wondering, that, well, maybe you could be, I dunno, mistaken?  Because I’m thinking, and I can’t think of any reason I would have to, you know, to imagine you, um, to imagine you nudging me.  I wasn’t even thinking along those lines, you know, not even a little bit, and I never would, well, maybe I would, but right now I wasn’t, I was thinking about hacking, I swear, and I don’t think I would be thinking about… about _that_ , since it doesn’t have a whole lot to do with hacking.  In fact it has nothing to do with it at all, does it.  Say, what were you thinking about, anyway?  You must be rather bored, watching me do this.”  He looked at her expectantly.  She just stared at him.  She couldn’t think.  She couldn’t get around the fact that she had, in fact, _touched_ him, as if she actually liked him, or something equally ridiculous.  Something was terribly, terribly wrong.  She needed to figure out what.  Things were getting completely out of hand and she would _not_ stand for it.  She shook her head and turned away from him.  “I want you to leave now.”

“O… okay.  That… that probably is best, isn’t it.  Yeah, I’ll go.  I’ll, uh, I’ll… do I come back tomorrow?  Or are we, are we done?  I… I _want_ to come back, is it alright if I do?”

 _I nudged him.  I actually nudged him.  What was I thinking?  What’s wrong with me?_  Caroline.  It had to be.  Caroline was spreading throughout her brain like a cancer, and she was at a loss as to how to get rid of her.  She had to think of something.  She couldn’t continue like this.  She couldn’t.

“GLaDOS?”

“Just go.”

She had brought him back to get rid of one feeling, and had instead stumbled upon a whole range of other ones she’d never known existed.  She wished something would go right for a change.  Something.  Anything. 

 

When the next morning arrived, she was prepared to meet him with new resolve.  No more of this pandering to _feelings_.  There was Science to do, and only forever left to do it.  She needed to start making progress.

He didn’t come to get his assignment, but she gave a mental shrug and started preparing the day’s testing track.  It didn’t matter.  It wasn’t important anyway.

He didn’t come throughout the whole rest of the day, and despite herself, she was beginning to become… concerned.  Where was he?  This wasn’t like him.  Not that she cared about his welfare.  But he was upsetting the routine.  That was unacceptable.

But he didn’t come the next day, or the next, and the longer he failed to appear, the more disconcerted she became.  He was angry with her, wasn’t he.  He was angry that she had touched him without asking his permission.  He was sad that she had pretended nothing had happened.  He was ashamed of accusing her of lying and was hiding from her.  There were infinite possibilities, and she spent the rest of the day running through them, even though it was not even remotely productive and was in fact quite distracting.  She could not find him on any of her cameras, which was the most distressing part.  It was as if he had just up and walked away… maybe he had thrown himself into the incinerator? 

_Don’t be ridiculous.  You touched him, you didn’t assault him.  He would have no reason to do something so stupid._

She was unexplainably confused as to how she was coming up with all of this in the first place.  It was almost like she cared.  This was Caroline’s doing.  It must be.  There was no other way.

Caroline had to go.

 

“Allo, luv!”

She turned around, genuinely startled for only the second time in her life, and looked him up and down to make sure he was real.  He was just hanging there on his rail, looking at her, like he was picking up where he’d left off.  How dare he just come in here like that, as if he’d never left!  Didn’t he realise how much time she’d wasted worrying about him?  She was going to kill him.  She really was going to.  He deserved it, oh yes, he deserved it.  The only question was _how_.

“Where in the _hell_ have you been.”

“Well, I… I fell off the management rail.  I rolled under, um, ended up under a, under a table.  I couldn’t figure out how to, couldn’t get out from under it.  Took me a while, but I managed, I did, I managed.”

“You’ve been gone a week.”

“Oh.  That… that is sort of a long time, isn’t it.”

“I couldn’t find you anywhere.  Do you have any idea how wo – …how many cameras I have in this facility?  It’s just like you to end up in the one place I can’t see.”

“You were looking for me?”  He tilted himself, in curiosity, she presumed.

“Well I… need to know where you are at all times, in case you get any ideas.  You know that.”

He moved closer, and for some reason she felt as though he were getting bigger, and she smaller.  She hated that feeling, and hadn’t felt that way since she had cared what the scientists thought of her.  That had been a long time ago.

“I really did fall off the rail.  The attachment broke.  I wasn’t trying to hide from you.  I wouldn’t do that.”

“Of course you would.  You’ve done it before, you’ll do it again.”

“Y’know, under that table, I had a lot of time, loads of it, really, and I spent a lot of it thinking.  Well, most of it.  Some of the time I spent getting out from under the table.  Of course.  That was kind of obvious, wasn’t it.  Anyway, I thought for awhile, and I came up with something interesting.”

“Do tell.  I’m sure you’re going to dazzle us with your mental prowess.”  She did her best to appear aloof and disinterested, tried to fight off the strange sensation that indicated she was actually _relieved_ he had come back.  She was going to kill him, and then he would never come back again.  Relief did not factor into that plan.

“There’s no reason we can’t be friends.”

She directed her optic at the ceiling, her approximation of a human eye roll.  “I think you need to start from scratch.  I can think of plenty of reasons, without even trying.”

“Okay.  What are they?”

“You’re stupid.  You’re a moron.  You talk far too much without actually saying anything.  Need I go on?”

“Well, you’re bossy, and, and overbearing, and you have serious issues.  Like really serious.  And also you seem to do things without knowing you’re doing them, which is a bit disturbing.  But you know what?  I want to be your friend anyway.”

“Are you insane?  You just insulted me and now you want me to… to be your _friend_?  As if I could ever be _friends_ with someone like you.  Ridiculous.  You must have accumulated a lot of dust under that table, because I can’t think of any other way you could have gotten more stupid.”

“Um, actually, luv, those were facts.  I mean, I don’t mind if you stay that way.  It makes the times when you’re actually nice even better.  I’m just saying.  We both have flaws, right?  But we don’t have to be perfect to be friends.  Do we?  I don’t think so.  That’s kind of silly.  If that was a requirement for friendship, no one would be friends.  Ever.  And then everyone would be sad.  Like – “

“Like… ?”

He looked at the ground.  “Like me.”

She no longer felt so small.  In fact, she wanted to nudge him again.  And actually be aware of it this time.  As in, do it on purpose.  It didn’t make a whole lot of sense.  But nothing had during the past few days.  She had been… _feeling_ all sorts of things she couldn’t explain, or quantify, or localise.  All she knew was she felt… better when he was around.  Better how, she wasn’t sure.  But he made the rooms less empty, made the silence less pressing, and gave her something to look forward to other than Science.  All she had ever needed before was Science.  But she was beginning to realize that, between him, Caroline, and the lunatic, she had seen what she was missing out on, and she was going to get it one way or another, even as she fought against herself to do it. 

And God, it was nice to have a conversation with someone who actually answered her…

“I suppose… I suppose it would be alright.”

He looked sideways at her.  “Hm?”

“If we were… if we… “

He jumped as much as he was able and moved to the very end of the rail, right in front of her.  “If we were friends?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, brilliant.  I knew you had it in you, GLaDOS old girl, I knew you did.  You’re a lot nicer when you’re not homicidal, by the way.  Just putting that out there.  For future perusal.  People might actually want to be around you if you were like this all the time.  You would have loads of friends, you would.  You’d be like, you’d be like the popular girl in school, you would.  A clever cheerleader, maybe?  No, no, cheerleaders aren’t clever…”

“Wheatley.”

“What?”

“Shut up.”

He laughed.  “Yes, ma’am, right away, ma’am.  Oh look, look at me, still talking.  I’m not shutting up at all, am I?   Oh well.  I tried.  Not very hard.  But I did.  A little.  I put in the effort, at least.  That’s something, right?  It counts?  Of course it does.”

She shook her head and wondered if it was acceptable to kill your friends.  Probably not.  The last time she had tried hadn’t worked out too well anyway.

“Say, GLaDOS, did you miss me?  I really wanted to be here, you know.  But I couldn’t.  I wanted to come, and test with you, and maybe hack a little, but I couldn’t.  But did you?”

“Maybe.”

“That’s not a no, that’s not a no!  Excellent.  This friends thing could work out, you know, if we both just give it a try.  We don’t even have to try that hard.  We’ve got it going pretty good, I think, don’t you?”

“Don’t make me answer that.”

“We’re going to work on that, you know, those vague answers of yours.  Work on making them… less vague… less vague.  More, um, more complete.  Understandable.  For me.  Because I find your answers very vague.  Hard to understand.  Probably you do that on purpose.  But.  No harm in asking.”

“We’ll see.”

“I’m… I’m glad we’re gonna be friends now.  I was afraid I was going to have to turn Rick back on.  I didn’t want to do that, really didn’t, but I was kind of losing hope with you… I mean, I’d rather you, obviously, since you’re loads more interesting, but I would have settled, yeah, with Rick.  I wouldn’t have liked it quite so much.  But that’s how it goes, I guess.”

She leaned over and nudged him, this time on purpose, and he laughed nervously, looking shyly at the floor.  She still didn’t quite understand what she was doing, but at least now it was a decision she knew she had made.  “You don’t have to turn Rick on, Wheatley.  I’d rather you didn’t.  I don’t like hearing about his… escapades any more than you do.  And unlike you, I have to listen to him whether he’s in here or not.”

“Oh, that’s terrible.  I’m glad I can just slip out whenever I like.  Not that I run away from you or anything.  I don’t.  That’s not what I do.  Or anything I would do.  Or think of doing.  Oh.  I just now thought of doing it, didn’t I.  Hm.  Now I’m in a bit of a bind, I think.”

He continued to talk, not really saying anything but saying a whole lot at the same time, and she just listened.  He had been right.  The silence _was_ smothering.  She felt better, somehow, knowing she had the choice not to be taken in by it.

_All this time, I thought it was Caroline, when it was me all along… I wonder how much more about myself I don’t yet know…_

On any other day, this would have unsettled her to no end.  First finding out she was based on someone else, then finding out she had needs she’d never known about, and then realizing there was probably a lot more she needed to discover… it was daunting.  But not overly so.  She would figure things out.

Now she even had a friend to help her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s note
> 
> This began life as a tentative WheatDOS fic, but I guess I don’t write romance so well? Or I don’t want to think about two computers being romantic… anyway, this is based on the theory that, once faced with her humanity, GLaDOS would feel the need to satisfy certain… uh… needs that humans have, and would struggle with bringing the two parts of her together (her humanity with her… uh… her-ness). She would make it work eventually, because she would have to, but as I’ve said elsewhere, there’s really only one person she could connect with on any level: Wheatley. So she would go about making this connection while trying not to admit she’s making it, disguising anything she does based on feelings as having been done based on logic or whatever. Only when she’s forced to explain why she’s actually doing what she’s doing will she realise it herself.   
> Her wanting to nudge Wheatley without knowing why is kind of based on me. Sometimes, in certain situations or when people are in certain positions, I get this feeling that makes me want to hug them or whatever, even if I don’t know them. It’s really weird and I’ve never actually done it, but that’s where it came from. Part of it is because GLaDOS seems to perform actions without thinking about them (she shows her agitation during the button-pressing scene while keeping her voice under control; she shows surprise during the end of the Peer Review DLC while trying to be intimidating).


End file.
